Building bridges between survivors of the Holocaust and today’s younger generation is the focus of one of a week-long series of events being organised by the University for Holocaust Memorial Week.
Co-ordinated by Professor Rainer Schulze, the week, from 21-27 January 2013, will focus on the theme of the Arts and the Holocaust.
The week starts on Monday 21 January with a Twilight Zone Café at The Minories in Colchester High Street. Andrea Brooks from the University’s East 15 Acting School with will give a free talk entitled 'The opposite of art is indifference' - how can the Arts respond to the Holocaust? which will be an introduction to the main theme of Holocaust Memorial Week 2013, from 6.30pm-8.00pm.
On Tuesday 22 January, at the University’s Colchester Campus from 5.00pm-6.30pm, there will be a free open seminar where Dr Nina Fischer, from the University of Konstanz, Germany will talk about Daniel Mendelsohn's The Lost: In Search of Six of Six Million; part memoir, reportage, mystery, and scholarly detective work.
Also on Tuesday, from 8.00-9.30pm The London Klezmer Quartet will be performing an exuberant recital of the celebratory and soulful music of pre-war Jewish Eastern Europe at the University’s Lakeside Theatre.
Schools from across Essex and Suffolk will be presenting their entries in the form of readings, art, film, poetry, performance and music, as part of the Dora Love Prize 2013 at a special evening at the Lakeside Theatre on Wednesday 23 January from 7.30pm-9.30pm. The theme, ‘Building Bridges – Fostering Futures’, relates to bridges between survivors of the Holocaust and today’s younger generation. The evening will culminate in the award of the 2013 Dora Love Prize.
Launched during last year’s Holocaust Memorial Week, the Dora Love Prize will be awarded each year for the best school or college Holocaust awareness project. It is in memory of Dora Love, who died in October 2011, was a survivor of Stutthof concentration camp and a University of Essex Honorary Graduate.
On Thursday 24 January at the Lakeside Theatre from 7.30pmn-9.30pm there will be a free panel discussion, titled Can there be Art about Auschwitz? Chaired by Professor Rainer Schulze, the event explores what can art do to enhance our understanding of the Holocaust today.
An evening of short performances and video screenings relating to the Holocaust and how we view people today who are different to us will be held on Friday 25 January at the Lakeside Theatre from 7.30pm-9.00pm. Following the performance there will a Ceremony of Light on the University’s Square 5, to commemorate victims of the Holocaust and other genocides.
The week’s events will end on Saturday 26 January with a special screening of Shoah − Claude Lanzmann's powerful remembrance of the Holocaust, with testimonies from survivors, witnesses and perpetrators. This event offers a unique opportunity to see the film in its 9½-hour entirety.
Throughout the week, artist-in-residence Martha Haversham will be creating a participatory artwork that evolves and changes through the week.
For further information please visit: www.essex.ac.uk/history/holocaust_memorial_week, e-mail events@essex.ac.uk, call 01206 872807.
To book free events call: 01206 872807 or e-mail: events@essex.ac.uk.
For paid events, contact the Lakeside Theatre box office: 01206 873 261 or visit: www.lakesidetheatre.org.uk
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Note to editors
Since 2007 the University of Essex has marked Holocaust Memorial with a series of events taking place during the week that leads up to or includes 27 January, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp by Soviet troops.